Thursday, 2 June 2016

13 - Why worry?

When talking to people about anxiety one thing
that strikes me again and again is how their own fear of that emotion (and the
worst case scenario it makes them feel is almost guaranteed to happen) is so
much worse than the emotion itself - or reality, where the things we dread
hardly ever actually happen. One fantastic depiction of this same thing comes
in the Harry Potter books, by JK Rowling - and in Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban in particular.

In this book, Harry encounters horrible
creatures called dementors - which are actually based on JK Rowlings own
experiences of anxiety and depression. Dementors are monsters who suck the life
out of you, forcing you to experience again the worst memories of your life,
and overwhelming you with the feeling that you will never be happy again. They
affect more strongly those who have had bad experiences in their past and Harry
- who has been through some difficult things - is very powerfully affected by
them. Here’s a clip from the
film of the moment when he first encounters them - when
they are searching the school train for an escaped criminal.

Later in the film Harry and his classmates have
an experience of another creature - a bogart - which when confronting someone
immediately turns into whatever they fear the most.IN the class (when they learn how to deal
with a bogart), each student faces it one at a time. Here’s the
clip of that class…

Later still, Harry has a conversation with his
teacher (Remus Lupin) and admits that the thing he fears most is the dementors.
Lupin responds ‘That’s very
wise Harry.It suggests that what you
fear most is fear itself.Very wise
Harry, very wise.’(In Rowling, JK.2004.Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban.Bloomsbury
Publishing PLC.) JK Rowling demonstrates brilliantly
why our own reaction to our fears can be so powerful - it paralyses us and
makes us unable to fight back; it turns us into victims.

What is great is how the book then goes on to
demonstrate a bit of basic CBT - working to learn how to regain control of our
thinking to defeat anxiety. This
clip shows Lupin trying to teach Harry how to conjure a patronus -
a spell which will defeat the dementors. This spell is about focusing as hard
as you can on happy memories - truths which counteract the things the dementors
might be trying to make you think about. It is the strength of these things and
of your own will to focus your thinking on them - that helps you beat dementors.
But what perhaps takes the real sting out of the dementors is realising how
much of their power comes from our own fear of them. If we can reduce
our fear of fear itself we are a long way towards fighting it.